Voulibilis & Moulay Idriss, 6/28: Our first trip was together as a group to the ruins of Walili (the Arabic name, also the word for oleander). This city was built when Morocco was a part of the Roman empire centuries ago, and later it was destroyed in an earthquake. We saw stone homes with bathrooms and kitchens, mosaic floors that illustrated stories from Roman mythology, and machinery to harvest olive oil. The Romans even had a solar-powered hot-tub area! Broken infrastructure spanned a large area between the two baabs/doors to the city. We weren’t quite in the desert, but we were in the sun for a while with little shade during the tour!
Afterwards we briefly visited the small town of Moulay Idriss, which is located on a mountainside. We saw a minaret of a mosque with tiled Arabic in Kufic script as well as the mosque where Moulay Idriss himself is buried - however we could not go see the tomb because only Muslims are allowed to visit mosques in Morocco. We walked around the small souq/market for a little while before coming home. It was a good end to our week’s discussion on the history of Morocco and its cities.
Ifrane, 6/29: The next day, Molly, Sophia and I went to Ifrane for the day. We took a Grand Taxi around 9 AM into the mountains and got there around 10-10:30 AM. The nature there was beautiful as was the European architecture - the city was built during the French occupation because the soldiers stationed in Morocco wanted a getaway that resembled home. We first stopped for some coffee and juice at the only open restaurant in the area (this was the first day of Ramadan) before heading out to find the Waterfall of Virgins. This ended up being a two-hour trek to a smaller body of water! Nevertheless, we got to soak up the sun and enjoy the nice weather outdoors - it was a lot cooler there than in Meknes.
On the way back to town, Molly haggled us passage through the national park on horseback. It was a unique but terrifying experience! We got to see the waterfall in the park after all so it was worth it. After returning to the same restaurant for a pizza lunch, we attempted to find a taxi to take us to a small artisanal town nearby but everyone had different opinions on how far it was and also whether or not it existed, so we called our cab driver and just hung out until he arrived around 4:30 PM. Ifrane was a cute and close location for our first day trip on our own.
Fez, 7/5: Last weekend Molly, Bobby, Megan, and I went to Fez only for the day, since it’s less than an hour away and the availability of stores & sites is a bit iffy during Ramadan. We rode first class on a train from Meknes to Fez (with a Harry Potter-like compartment!) and got there around 2 PM. A grand taxi driver took us to Baab __ which is considered to be the most beautiful one the city although it was only built in the past century, and we ended up wandering the market with Mohammed as our guide (we didn’t ask for assistance, people tend to be somewhat aggressive concerning “helping” tourists in some areas). He took us to one of Fez’s famous tanneries first before we saw a pottery shop and a Berber textile shop; these stores happened to be owned by Mohammed’s family and friends. We each made at least one significant purchase that day - mine was a pair of nice shoes from the tannery. In the middle of all this, we grabbed a traditional lunch of salad (with the best goat cheese I’ve ever had) and tagine in the middle of the city which was delicious.
After Mohammed left us, most stores and restaurants started closing for iftar/breaking of the fast for Ramadan so we scurried to find the famed Cafe Clock from Molly’s travel guide. They weren’t serving food when we arrived but we all got drinks and headed to the rooftop terrace, where we watched the sunset, talked, and tried to do homework while waiting for the restaurant to open up again. Megan and I eventually split pancakes with fruit for dinner (I miss IHOP!) before we took a Grand Taxi home around 10 PM. It seems that people either like or dislike Fez, and I returned to Meknes with a largely positive impression of the city.